Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Peter Gammons' recently posted ten key questions left to answer this spring. None of them involved the NL West, so I won't waste your time. (Unsurprisingly, #1 was about the Yankees (rotation), and #2 was about the Red Sox (rotation). Thanks, Peter, for such a national perspective!)

Buried in his bullet points was this note from an anonymous scout:

One scout had Dodger rookie reliever Jonathan Meloan with a 7 curveball (on a 2-to-8 scale).

I'm glad Meloan was rated 7 out of 8. But can someone explain to me why baseball scouts would use such a wacky scale in the first place?

5
comments:

Curveball, shmurveball. I'm bored with all these fancylad pitchers dancing around the plate. They never pan out. Why can't the Dodgers develop anyone who can throw some heat? Eh, those guys always turn into Antonio Osuna. Whatever.

Gagne was one of those fancylads in the minors and he was well on the road to failure as a starter. It wasn't until he became the closer that he unleashed his fastball and turned into a monster. A good fastball made his curve and change devastating. They aren't letting the kids air it out in the minors. They need to mold some more Koufaxes, with heat AND the girly pitches. It seems like none of our pitching prospects have worked out since Pedro Martinez. I don't know what I'm talking about really, someone should research this.

Ummm, would that be the Sandy Koufax who had one of the best curves ever?

OK, that was a bit snarky. Sorry, cigarcow. We, the Sons of Steve Garvey, should be more encouraging. Anyhow, to respond to you comment, I think the Dodgers have lots of young fireballers in their system. Here are the K/9 stats that some of the "Baby Blues" put up at the Major League level in 2006: